Benjamin J. Marrison commentary: Later news now can get into paper by deadline

Also in Opinion

Subscribe to The Dispatch

Already a subscriber?
Enroll in EZPay and get a free gift!
Enroll now.

Sunday December 15, 2013 7:02 AM

Reader Doug Groetzinger wrote to ask what time we start the presses every night.

Additionally, “Did the reformat of the paper affect the time the presses run or number of
different editions printed? Or is it just one edition because of printing other newspapers in
the same night/early morning?”

The new format actually gave us later deadlines for most of the news sections of the paper, but
it cost us a little time on some features sections.

Most nights, we have two press runs: one that starts at 8:30 p.m. (for features sections and
Business news), and one that starts at 12:30 a.m. (for the main news section, Metro, Sports and
Nation/World). The newsroom must have its pages completed 30 minutes before the presses start. We
can update or “make over” the sections at 1:30 a.m.

To produce the Sunday edition, with its large number of sections, we actually begin printing
some sections on Friday morning and throughout the day Saturday. Our Saturday night press run is at
11:45, with an update at 1:15.

There are some deviations from this when events necessitate it, such as elections, major
sporting events or severe weather conditions that will affect delivery.

Our various teams work together to devise a plan designed to provide the best content and
delivery times.

• • •

Ed Thomas of Baltimore, Ohio, got this off of his chest on Friday:

“I have stewed about this for a long time, and finally decided to write. When did the phrase ‘
went missing’ become de rigueur for disappearances, kidnappings, etc.? What prompted this was a
Dispatch story last weekend regarding golf clubs taken from a storage locker.
Unfortunately, your writer used the phrase ‘went missing.’ I would like to know where the golf
clubs ‘went’. And is ‘missing’ someplace in Michigan? To my knowledge, nothing, and no one, can ‘
went’ anywhere. And how did they ‘went’? Did they take the bus? Did they drive? (pun intended) This
unfortunate phrasing seems to have come from England, and I respectfully request that you inform
your staff to stop using it.’’

“Better phrasing,” Thomas suggested, “would be stolen, disappeared, vanished, kidnapped, or even
misplaced. I realize you have no control over wire service stories, but for locally produced items
you can do better.”

This is interesting. The reader is correct: One cannot
went.

But if we wrote a person
disappeared, obviously that’s technically not correct, either. The person is somewhere, in
some physical state.

If we say a person was
kidnapped, as suggested, it would assume that we know that to be true. It’s possible that
person ran away, or became ill somewhere and is unable to communicate. If we say something was
misplaced, it’s possible that it was stolen, and we wouldn’t want to assume anything.

We could write that an individual was
discovered missing, but that’s an oxymoron. We could write that an individual was
found to be missing, I suppose. People use the expression that someone or something
went missing because it is clear in its meaning and concise, even if ungrammatical.

It’s one for us to consider. As I shared it with folks in the newsroom, they found it a question
worth pondering. And we shall.

Benjamin J. Marrison is editor of The Dispatch.
You can read his blog at
Dispatch.com/blogs.